Comments for Olive console in France

The initial vision for the Olive console came from Wayne Jones in 1969. At that time, consoles were being built in one of two ways: completely custom with the whole control surface built as one custom panel, or modular using individual functional elements such as faders, equalizers, and compressors. Electrodyne had pioneered the concept of the “strip modularization”, laying out each input channel as a vertical column. The column itself consisted of a series of individual modules starting with the fader at the bottom and working up to channel switches at the top. Using this modular approach, consoles with different quantities of inputs could be constructed by assembling side by side strips. Quad Eight and Automated Processes (later API) would later continue this approach. Using this technique, a custom console could be designed using standard components, thus reducing the engineering effort, risk, and development time. Yet a customer could configure a console unique enough to suit their particular needs.

Jones started Olive with the belief that a single input channel strip module with all of the functions integrated would be more cost effective. But it would have to include all of the functions commonly wanted by users. He reasoned that a single module circuit board and single metal housing would lower the cost compared to individual modules, and that the more circuit boards were used for wiring rather than conventional point to point wiring, he wanted to use circuit boards to interconnect the input module strips, and to carry the modular approach all the way through the construction, even to the large console housing. Two-foot wide frames would be made that could be bolted together to make console widths in multiples of two feet.

The execution had flaws. The tolerance ldup caused by alignment of the two-foot frames and associated two-foot bus boards compromised the integrity of this busing concept. The alignment of the connectors on the input modules that plugged into the bus boards was also compromised due to the distances involved.Resulting in the modules did not always seat correctly,the contacts between the modules and the bus boards were not reliable. This was a major source of reliability issues for the console.